Many industrial processes produce small articles in bulk which must be packaged and transported to the retailer or individual consumer. The food industry in particular processes many meat and vegetable products which must be frozen and/or hermetically sealed in a package prior to leaving the plant. Many packaging machines are known for this purpose which operate in a very efficient manner.
Processed food articles, and in particular meat products such as burger patties and sausage patties, for eventual sale to restaurants and institutions present special problems in the processing plant. The food articles are made in bulk by very efficient automated equipment. They must also be efficiently packaged in a sanitary manner for the whole process to be efficient. The articles presently are conveyed to a packaging station and loaded into cartons. Flattened articles such as the burger and sausage patties have been stacked in open-top cartons and shipped. Hand-loading is very inefficient and can cause sanitation problems. Industrial robots are a much better way to package the food articles and have been used to a limited extent for this purpose.
Robots are available which are able to pick-up individual articles from a conveyor or a product accumulation station and transfer them into a packaging container. It has been found that known systems using robots in packaging processed food articles have not been fully satisfactory. Most of the food articles are fragile in that they bruise easily or crumble easily. Even many frozen articles are sufficiently friable that small bits of food are easily knocked loose. Besides the wastage this creates, a sanitation problem is created. The food bits must be continually removed from the packaging station. This often entails shutting down the whole packaging assembly line for a thorough wash-down. The robotic systems simply have not been fully satisfactory for packaging certain processed food articles because their mechanical components are too damaging in one way or another to the articles.
There is a need for an improved method of transferring processed food articles into packaging containers for shipment to the customer. In accord with this need, there has been developed a robotic hand for use on a robot which is able to pick-up generally round flattened articles in a gentle, non-damaging manner. The robotic hand is economical to build and very efficient in its operation.